HONG KONG (SE): The International Women’s Day turned out be a protest day for foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, who trooped to Immigration Tower in Wanchai, on March 8, objecting to policies they believe keep them down as modern slaves in the city.

Sringatin, spokesperson of the members of the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body said foreign domestic workers are women entitled to labour rights, but many policies in Hong Kong bind them to slave-like conditions.

WASHINGTON (SE): The large crowds that gathered on January 21, the day after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America (US), was originally billed as a protest by feminists against the anti-woman policies and attitudes of the new man in the While House.

But controversy quickly broke out and a week prior to the event the registration of what had described itself as a pro-life group, taken as being anti-abortion, was rejected by the organisers as being anti-feminist.

Hong Kong (SE): “Facing all this persecution, we cannot take it for granted. We cannot stand idly,” Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, the former bishop of Hong Kong, told around 100 protesters gathered at the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Sai Wan, on April 24.

He called on the authorities in Beijing to end the persecution of Christians and to respect religious freedom.

KIDAPAWAN (UCAN): There may be a drought in Mindanao, but that hardly justifies the high price that a group of farmers had to pay for their relief rice—three lives, 116 injuries and around 89 disappearances.

On April 1, as around 6,000 farmers blocked the main highway between Cotabato and Davao in Kidapawan City demanding that the local government release aid allocated by the national government in Manila, the police opened fire and began rounding up the farmers and locking them up.

HONG KONG (SE): Taxi drivers held a short rally at the gates of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception during the 9.30am Mass on April 10 asking for permission to take their clients inside the Holy Cross Cemetery in the Cape Collision area of Chai Wan.

Currently the front gate to the cemetery is a dead end for taxi drivers, which leaves their clients a long walk to reach graves in various parts of the area.

HONG KONG (UCAN): A group of Chinese Catholic people in the United States of America (US) planned to protest against the visit of the president of China, Xi Jinping, outside the Chinese consulate in New York on the day that he arrived in the country, September 22.

The group, all of whom live in New York, said that as expatriates living the US they are discontented with the deteriorating situation of religious life in their country of birth.